This blog was inspired by two very thought-provoking parties.
The first: My grandmother who hounds me every time that I speak to her (not as often as she’d like) that I need to write another blog so she can have something to fill her time at work. Imagine that?
Me - ‘Happy Mother’s Day, Meme!’
Grandmotha – ‘You should really update your blog, you know?’
The nerve of some people. You think she’d be happy enough that I wasn’t in her basement wasting electricity by leaving the fan on all day, but no, she feels the need to assign me chores despite the fact that I am thousands and thousand of miles away. That’s how she provokes thought; through insistence.
The second: While wasting time (isn’t it always wasting time?) on facebook I stumbled upon something that my good friend, KC, wrote to another good friend, Jaime, on her wall. It read:
Don’t exaggerate your experiences, to yourself or others.
KC had written this to Jaime quoting something that Jaime had written in her blog. Well I damn near busted a move this quote excited me so much. ‘Wow,’ I thought ‘Jaime really hit the nail on the head on that one.’ It turns out, however, that Jaime just copied it from a book written by the Dolly Llama, (that’s how you spell his name, right?) but either way (sorry for taking your thunder Jaim) it really is something that needs to be acknowledged.
So here we go.
To those of you who are wondering, I have not yet saved the world. Furthermore, I don’t think I’ll be able to fit that in my agenda in the 2 years or so that I will be here. I am sorry but I just haven’t got it in me; the time, the resources, or the know-how.
My students that Lifting La Peña sponsors do not get all A’s. To be honest, out of a 10 point scale, our average grade right now in Social Studies is 5.5.
Last year I did a dental campaign. This year there wasn't any more toothpaste left, so I laid the responsibilities to raise money for more toothpaste on the teachers of the school. After three months of school the students still were without toothpaste. I had to buy it myself. I guess I'll be the one organizing raffles and fruit sales in order to raise these kids $10 for toothpaste. How's that for sustainable?
Last year I ran a reforesting campaign, too. We planted about 500 trees of 17 different class of tree here in La Peña in an effort to reforest the most rapidly deforesting country on the planet. Just yesterday while chopping my lawn a man stopped by my house to chit chat and he, like so many others before, told me about how the majority of his trees already died and didn’t make it to the rainy season.
In all honesty, I often times find it hard to find interesting things to write about. You see, there is a certain dilemma to being here and actually successfully conveying even the slightest glimpse into what is really going on around me and putting enough spin on it that you’ll give a damn. Let me reassure you though, whatever it is that I am doing is not saving this world or the next. Most days are filled with small, almost obnoxious tasks that to be honest, when completed, fill me with more pride than you can imagine. For example, today I had to, again, fix the water that runs to my house from a little hole in a rock at the top of the mountain. Do you have any idea how unbelievable it feels to finally, after days of poorly thought out solutions, figure out a way to provide yourself with water when you were without before? You better believe I let out a sigh of relief and enjoyed the moment while I could before I had to wash 13 pairs of dirty socks, a bunch of underwear, TWO pairs of jean shorts (I am a part of the Proud Jean Short Wearer Club of Western El Salvador), and a whole boat load of T-shirts by hand.
As if that doesn’t get your skin tickling, right? How is that for ‘making the world a better place?’
Let’s not fool ourselves here. Although I love being here, and I really and truly do, I think what Dolly Parton said was right… I can’t exaggerate any part of this experience. I haven’t found a free cure for AIDS or helped train some Salvadoran ninja-warrior who can take down FOX News…like I said, I probably won’t save the world.
I haven’t met the president yet, and I haven’t supplied La Peña with running water, and the road into town is unpaved, and we are STILL without a Health Promotor, and on top of that there are still a few houses in this town that are without electricity, and although I can imagine how great it would be to have a positive influence in these peoples’ lives there is an overwhelming possibility that I just can’t make those particulars happen.
But sometimes I do get lucky and feel like I may be heading in the right direction.
About a month ago my friend (and Lifting La Peña scholarship recipient) Marvin came by the house. It had rained the night before and a small landslide had made the dirt road to my house inaccessible so he came climbing up to my house from the face of the mountain. I am not going to lie to you, I was a little taken aback to him come stomping up the side of the mountain, walking through the brush, but he explained what had happened to the street as I poured his cup of coffee and handed him a large bowl of Puppy Chow (thanks again, Cindy!).
After a few minutes of laughing at how dirty his shoes were from the hike I made a comment about how great it must feel to have a Saturday off from school for Semana Santa.
(My most sincere apologies for the 'he said, he said.')
Marvin looked up from his cup of coffee and told me that was what he had come to talk about: that he was not going to continue with school.
My face got really red and a brick settled very abruptly in my stomach.
He told me that he would pay me back for the calculator and the uniform. He told me that he would just need a few weeks to make the money, but he would find a way to raise the $22.50 to pay me back.
‘Slow down,’ I told him after I could bring myself to speak, ‘Why aren’t you?’
Marvin is a genuinely great kid. He is the eldest in a family of six without a father. He plays guitar in the La Peña Catholic Church every Thursday and Sunday. He is the President of the Directive of the school in La Peña. He is a ‘vocal’ on the La Peña local governance committee. He is the captain of the La Peña soccer team. He is exactly who I had in mind when the opportunity to start the scholarship came up back in February. Marvin is the one who took me, a complete stranger at the time, to a swimming hole over an hours walk away from town the day after I arrived in La Peña last year. He is the kind of kid you’d wish your sons could be like. He’s the kind of kid I hope my sons are like.
He told me that the father of his brothers and sisters (different fathers, his own father doesn't acknowledge him) who lives in the US stopped sending money a few months ago and probably won’t be sending any more. Because of that he needs to find ways to earn a little money to buy sugar, rice, toilet paper and other things of that sort for the family. On top of that he said the rainy season is coming and he needs to plant all the corn and the beans to put food on his family’s table for the next year. He looked me in the eyes and told me that he just couldn’t keep up with all of it and have time to study every night and give up his Saturdays to go to school. He said he would need those days to work in the milpa.
I didn’t know what to say, and believe me, it’s the worst feeling in the world when you not only can’t think of the words, but in a foreign language.
I was broken, crushed. This wasn’t just any student. This was Marvin. Marvin who despite having so much work to do in providing for his family still voluntarily holds soccer practice for the younger kids in town every Wednesday afternoon.
I told him that the money was not an issue at all, that he was not to worry about it in the least, but that I really wished that he would reconsider because education is important and this is a great opportunity.
He told me that the students in Metapán were too far advanced.
I told him I would give him more classes, private classes if he needed, every single night if it came to it. I would permanently fuse a dry erase marker to my right hand in order to teach him every single date in Social Studies, every single pronunciation in English, every single step in the Water Cycle, whatever it took.
He told me ‘That’s just it, Grego, I just do not have the time.’
It was really, really heart wrenching. I explained to him that he is one of my best friends here and he was, more than anyone, who I wanted to see benefit from this opportunity.
He told me he was the man of the house, the only one who works, and he needs to feed his family.
He was right. I couldn’t argue against it.
I told him I would do anything, anything at all, except do his homework for him or give him money.
He told me he understands, but with planting, harvesting, and fertalizing his own milpa how would he have time to do his homework and give up one day of work a week AND help other people in their work in order to earn money?
So I asked him if the problem was the workload or the ganas. Did he want to continue and not have time or did he just simply not want to continue with school? I told him to tell me the truth... I told him that he always has and I wouldn't expect any different now.
He got really red in the face, with all the pena of his 20 years so incredibly apparent in every syllable, he told me he didn't want to continue.
I almost lost it. I looked to the floor to hide my disappointment.
I told him to think about it. I told him he has an entire week and a half to think about it before the next classes homework should be started and finished. A week and a half. I told him to talk it over with his mother again and see what she says.
I told him if he doesn't feel like he is advanced enough we can make him advanced enough. I told him I may not speak Spanish very well but Math is in English.
I poured my heart out to him.
I told him how education is incredibly important. I told him that to me education is THE most important thing in the world. I told him it’s the only way that we can better ourselves without the help of any gringo, or the help of some mayor, or the help of remittances from the United States.
I told him if it came down to it I personally would go to the milpa with him every single day from the first day he plants until the last day of aporreando so that he could spend less time in the cornfield and more time studying. I promised him. I told him I KNEW that he could graduate if he was just given the chance, that I understood his situation, that I was going to help if I could, and of all the people in this town who deserve this opportunity, it is him. I told him that maybe graduating from High School doesn’t get him anywhere new, any extra money, or Claro satellite television, but that I didn’t want him throwing this golden ticket away. I told him that if any other student from La Peña had approached me about wanting to quit, I wouldn’t take it to heart or offer to spend months in the corn field, but he is different. I told him he's been one of my best friends since the day I got here and I mean it when I say that I will do anything in the world that I can to help you, Marvin. One week, Marvin, just go home and talk to Niña Miriam and think about it…
And then he interrupted me...
'La verdad es que voy a seguir,' with a very bashful smile, eyes half closed and filled to their brims with tears. 'Cuando me habla asi, me da la fuerza a seguir.'
‘The truth is that I am going to continue. When you speak to me like that you give me the strength to continue.’
I almost cried.
I almost jumped for joy.
I didn’t know which would have been more appropriate, but I was elated. I promised him again, just in case he didn’t believe me, that I would be there every single day. I told him I still had a lot to learn, but I would learn quickly and help as much as I possibly could. I told him to tell me when we begin, that I am really excited to get myself out of the house and learn how to plant.
He looked up from his Puppy Chow, smiled, and said ‘Hey, lets go back to that swimming hole we went to last year.’
On our way out of my house he nudged me and said 'Hey, Profe Doris told me that I can become a policeman with just a High School diploma.'
The reality is that what I do every day is a far cry from saving the world. I am not providing clean water or jobs to the marginalized, ending poverty, or even doing anything that is worth the space this blog takes up on the interweb, but every once in a while, despite all of the 5.5s out of 10 and the dead trees, I get lucky and find a smile hidden behind all these doubts and failures.
So for any of you who stuck around until the end of this blog, please understand exactly what it is that I DO do without any exaggerations: I chop my yard with a machete, I dig trenches behind my house to keep the water from rushing in, I spend hours every week unclogging the 300 meters of tubes that run water to my house, and soon I will spend my time planting and harvesting corn. Let's not kid ourselves, I have not changed the world and I can safely say that I never will, but I am thinking that the next few months of planting corn with Marvin may be what I had hoped for all along.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
High School, Pandolor, and Rock, Paper, Old Reliable
I don’t want to waste any time or space or bore you to death with my increasingly worsening story telling without first explaining something very important to you first. I promise there will be time for Gregorio in Wonderland after I get this off my skinny little chest.
In the 12 years that La Peña has had a school only 18 students have graduated from the 9th grade. For more reasons than I could possibly have time to write and explain, I decided not only was this number extremely low, but also realized that these graduates have had no educational opportunities since they left school.
The problem here in La Peña is pretty simple, really. We are 29 kilometers outside of our nearest pueblo, Metapán, and there is absolutely zero public transportation. We, as a community, only have transportation on Mondays at 6 AM or on Fridays at 6 AM; nothing in between. No student from La Peña has ever gone to high school before due to this overwhelming distance, lack of transportation, and, most important of all, money. It literally has just never been a possibility for them.
Now the kind of high school I am talking about here is not what you folks back home are thinking of. The particular classes that I was interested in are Distance Learning and only have classes once a week, on Saturday, from 7:30 AM to 3:30 PM. They study Language Arts, Computers, English, Math, Science, Social Studies, and people of the opposite gender (this is Latin America, remember). Although far from perfect, this system gives an incredible opportunity to people who live in the campo, in very rural areas, who at a young age are forced to work every day of the week in the corn fields or in the kitchen. Distance Learning was created exactly for us, for them.
So I started asking questions. I set up a meeting with the director of Rodrigro Leiva School, Don Roberto, in Metapán and between the two of us tried to work out some possibilities. After a few meetings in La Peña with all graduated students and their parents I knew that this project had to get off the ground immediately. I had 11 of 18 possible graduates up in arms with excitement about going back to school and I wanted more than anything to help them achieve this. I called Don Roberto that night and asked him a favor: although the school year had already started three weeks ago, could he please admit 11 students from La Peña to Leiva?
When I was a senior in high school I didn’t think I was going to go to college because I just didn’t think it’d be possible. I met questions about college with about as much forced apathy as most of the graduates from La Peña did saying things like ‘No, I am not going to college. I just don’t think I want to,’ when in reality I wanted nothing short of that. Then a little birdy named Hegarty sat me down daily and demanded I fill out Financial Aid forms, bypassed a few college application fees, and told me that despite what I lack, I should still get a chance to give this whole ‘learning how to read good’ thing a shot. Without help like her, I’d probably be working at Chubbies Liquors, playing scratch tickets, and hoping one day to finally be able to request a decent song on JAMN 94.5.
And look at me now!!! – poorer than I have ever been, living in one room brick shack, bathing with river water, and mowing my lawn with a machete. All that made possible with the help from people who told me I deserved a shot even when I probably didn’t. Ain’t I just livin’ the American Dream?
But seriously, I genuinely believe these young guns deserve their opportunity to get out of La Peña, continue learning, reading, maturing, learn a skill, meet a nice boy or girl that isn’t their first or second cousin, and hopefully move back to La Peña to take care of their parents and become the President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, and/or Vocales of the ADESCO.
When I brought the students into Leiva on Monday the 14th of February Don Roberto looked each one of them in the eye and said (allow me to paraphrase):
‘This is not going to be easy. You have already missed the first 4 classes, the first two lessons. Do you understand me? I don’t ask for perfection, I ask for ganas. Gregorio has spoken on your behalf, has offered his help. Now it’s up to you guys. If you don’t feel up for it, feel free to tell me, do not be shy. This is a serious commitment and needs to be approached as such. If you have any doubts you better put them away right now because in my desk I have a whole lot of papers for you to sign. If I didn’t have faith in you, I wouldn’t have asked you to come here today. So what do you say? (My students say absolutely nothing. Crickets try their hardest to conquer the silence at 9:30 AM) Alright! Let’s get started!’
Even though the Distance Learning Classes were at capacity, Don Roberto did me, did us, this huge favor and stuck his neck out to allow our 11 students into Leiva. He made an extra trip to the capital, San Salvador, to meet with the Director of Education there and bring all the necessary documents from our students out of the goodness of his heart. He did us an enormous favor and it is because of kindness from people like this that we were able to start this project.
So there you have it, damas y caballeros. The first 11 high school students ever out of La Peña.
That is not the end of this fable, though. I forgot to tell you that this was all just a really poorly written solicitude to you, my incredibly unfaithful audience, to help me raise some money.
This whole process would not have been possible without the help of two very generous donations from family friends. With these donations I have paid for uniforms, lesson plans, notebooks, classes, food, and transportation for the first few months. Unfortunately, these students won’t graduate within the next few months so I will need to continually fundraise to keep this project going. All in all it costs about $225 a month for these 11 students to graduate from high school but the future possibilities are astounding. One of my best friends, and one of the most intelligent and dedicated English students I have, Antonio, never graduated from high school here in La Peña. I asked him why and he said because you don’t really learn anything between 6th and 9th grade and his hard work was more valuable in the fields. What a shame, really, that they had such a glass ceiling. This sentiment isn’t felt by just Antonio, its felt by everyone in the community. Last year only three students graduated from 9th grade in La Peña, all girls, because people do not see any importance of graduating from the 9th grade when papi needs two extra hands to plant corn. What could they have really done past 9th grade before this? Nothing. It’s a damn shame that kids like Antonio have to cut themselves so short. I am hoping this project not only boosts the graduation rate because students can look forward to going to high school every year, but maybe even puts pressure on La Peña’s terrible school director to better teach these kids in order to better prepare them for high school. We will see.
So what I am asking is this: If you are feeling overly generous, slightly altruistic, deep pocketed, thirsty, kind, funny in the tummy, light headed, in love, cold, tired, buzzed, or just want to donate please, please, please contact me at gregcormier17@gmail.com. The amount doesn’t matter. You could send a check for a million dollars or use the US Postal Service to mail down a jar of pennies; anything and everything will be a huge help.
This is the first real project that I have done that I am genuinely, head over heels in love with. I want nothing more than to see La Peña’s future in the hands of the educated youth. I have already created a bank account for all the funds and within a short time will be appointing a Directive from this group of 11 students. Hopefully within the next year and a half I will have a new bank account created where one or two members of the community can be in charge of the monthly fees and can take care of the bill paying after I am gone.
So what do you say? Can you help me out? Can you spread the word? This donation will absolutely not be tax deductable, and it probably won’t turn bad karma around (if you’ve got any) but any little tiny donation will help immensely. Please keep us in mind and the begger in me is asking that you do not be shy, feel free to pass this information on to anyone you think may be interested. Yeah, just go ahead and do that.
On top of that, my application for a new $1300 project was approved by USAID to replace my very porous school roof with a much more durable, longer lasting, and sexier metal roof. Maybe now my students will stop coming to class with shampoo and towels.
Story time.
My buddy Gabe asked me ‘Who goes on vacation just to continue working?’
So for the past two and a half weeks I have been in Nicaragua helping and hindering a group of doctors and Tufts medical students run clinics in rural communities.
Here are some very true stories (with some not-so-true exaggerations) that made me realize I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
In the two and a half weeks that I was in Nicaragua I ate approximately 5 tortillas.
-----Here in El Salvador I eat at least 5 tortillas per meal. I never, ever, ever (ever) thought that I would miss these little flavorless disks of lovin’ but I sincerely did. The 5 that I ate in Nicaragua I had to specifically ask for. Nicaraguans apparently prefer to eat things with an upside to them, like rice, fruits, and vegetables. Those damn quacks.
People and dogs alike laughed themselves into convulsions when I fleetingly yelled ‘Shhhhh, chucho’ to get the mutts out of the kitchen. I didn’t understand why all the women left the kitchen blushing while the dogs stared at me blankly.
-----The Spanish word for dog is ‘perro.’ I have not called a dog a ‘perro’ in the 13 months that I have been pretending to know Spanish. That word is foreign to me and absolutely does not exist in my lexicon. Here in El Salvador, we lovingly refer to dogs as ‘chuchos.’ Well, I learned the hard way that in Nicaragua ‘perro’ is the word for dog and that ‘chucho’ is a vulgar word for vagina. I was never really allowed back in the kitchen after Day 1.
On our way out to Rosa Grande from Siuna I was chitting and chatting with Don Margarito and Albita about traveling and telling them about how I hadn’t brought much for this trip. Albita almost threw up into the box of eggs she was carrying and Don Margarito damn near drove off the rode in raucous, over-the-top laughter when I said ‘Yo no cargo mucho.’
-----Before figuring out what was so funny, we decided to take advantage of Margarito crashing into a ravine by washing off all the eggs that Albita has thrown up on in the crook that we ended up in. After all 250 eggs were sparkling clean, the two Nicaraguans explained to me that they heard me say ‘Yo no cago mucho.’ Apparently they did not understand my use of the verb ‘cargar’ which means to carry. They thought I used the verb ‘cagar’ which means to take a shit.
Most confusing of all, though, was how Harry threw his arms to the sky as if to thank dios for his most incredible bendición yet when I told him that I didn’t want to bother him: ‘No te quiero chingar, hombre.’
-----Long story short, Harry is a wise-ass from Bluefields and one of the most animated people you could ever meet. He did not waste the opportunity to make fun of me when I told him that I didn’t want to have sex with him. Chingar in El Salvador: To Bother. Chingar in Nicaragua: To Bang.
Those are just a few examples of how I made a complete ass of myself in my short time in Nicaragua.
These laughers aside, Nicaragua was a truly unbelievable experience. A close family friend, Brian Lisse, invited me to work with him and his 10 medical students running clinics in rural Northern Nicaragua. In those two weeks I met some of the most ridiculous, inspiring, and beautiful people I could have possibly hoped for. And the med students were alright, too.
Clinics were great. I spent from 730 AM til about 4 PM every day pretending to speak Spanish. The students’ job was to diagnose each patient that came into the clinic. My job was to act very confident being an intermediary between the patient and the student/soon to be doctor. I learned a lot of unbelievable things about PanDolor, Wei Wei taught me how to stitch people, Sharad taught me how to talk to mothers about their pandolorian babies, Sarah definitely taught me that headaches, kidney pain, and lazy eyes are all signs of Raging Cervicitus and that I should immediately ask all women if they are sexually active and to please remove their clothes, Cho taught me that kids gummy vitamins are an incredible way to avoid scurvy in the campo, and Rebecca taught me what a good ear drum looks like and then what a bad, shrapnel filled ear drum looks like and then proceeded to up the excitement by allowing me to clean out his compacted earwax into a sandwich baggy. The students were unbelievable.
One Friday we decided that we wanted to eat pig. Enough of this rice and beans bologna (or is it bolonie?, balony?). Lets eat some meat!
So Harry and I wrestled a pig away from some local man, brought him back to the house and decided, with a really intense look in our eyes, that it was time, as Harry would say, ‘to slice up this haaaag.’ We had a problem, though. Both Sharad and I wanted to kill the pig. Only one person can kill a pig at a time (I learned that from Don Luis, the Sandista) so Sharad and I settled the argument the civilized way: Rock, Papers, Scissors, best two out of three. After a lengthy battle, a series of 5 straight where no one threw anything but scissors, we found ourselves tied at one. 10 battles down, and we were only tied 1 to 1. I started to feel the pressure. I was up big, 1-0, and I let the lead slip away. I had to get my head back in the game. I did a couple jumping jacks, stretched out my hammies, and gave the pig a quick glance. He seemed to look at me as if to say ‘Buen provecho, Goyo. It’s time to eat’ and I knew that he was mine. Sharad and I gave each other a nod, it was on…
‘Rock!!!! Paper!!!! Scissors!!!!....’ time seems to stand still, everything moving in slow motion. My body starts to relax, my mind goes blank, I think about how funny it was that I told Harry I didn’t want to bang him and instinctively I throw old reliable…
‘SHOOOOOOOT!!!’
I stand upright and wave to the crowd (of two). Sharad leans back against the kitchen wall, defeated. I’m in shock. They tell me to grab the knife, that it’s time, but I can’t…my fingers seem to be permanently stuck in the shape of old reliable…
Needless to say the trip was amazing and I owe at least my first 13 children to Brian and Cindy for making it possible. I met some really great people, got a taste of home, killed a pig, cliff jumped, caught my first wave, drank pandolorian blood, learned how to stitch up serious cuts (I am doing my own stitches from here on in), learned some English Creole, danced my ass off, diagnosed at least 100 patients with kidney cancer, swung from vines, and cured one patient with a serious cup of smokey tea.
And although I spent about 42 hours in clinic in a 6 day span, those loonies sure didn’t make it feel like work at all. My words could hardly do any justice to how great of a trip that one was. Most important of all I learned that I will never trust my future children in the hands of a Tufts educated doctor.
In the 12 years that La Peña has had a school only 18 students have graduated from the 9th grade. For more reasons than I could possibly have time to write and explain, I decided not only was this number extremely low, but also realized that these graduates have had no educational opportunities since they left school.
The problem here in La Peña is pretty simple, really. We are 29 kilometers outside of our nearest pueblo, Metapán, and there is absolutely zero public transportation. We, as a community, only have transportation on Mondays at 6 AM or on Fridays at 6 AM; nothing in between. No student from La Peña has ever gone to high school before due to this overwhelming distance, lack of transportation, and, most important of all, money. It literally has just never been a possibility for them.
Now the kind of high school I am talking about here is not what you folks back home are thinking of. The particular classes that I was interested in are Distance Learning and only have classes once a week, on Saturday, from 7:30 AM to 3:30 PM. They study Language Arts, Computers, English, Math, Science, Social Studies, and people of the opposite gender (this is Latin America, remember). Although far from perfect, this system gives an incredible opportunity to people who live in the campo, in very rural areas, who at a young age are forced to work every day of the week in the corn fields or in the kitchen. Distance Learning was created exactly for us, for them.
So I started asking questions. I set up a meeting with the director of Rodrigro Leiva School, Don Roberto, in Metapán and between the two of us tried to work out some possibilities. After a few meetings in La Peña with all graduated students and their parents I knew that this project had to get off the ground immediately. I had 11 of 18 possible graduates up in arms with excitement about going back to school and I wanted more than anything to help them achieve this. I called Don Roberto that night and asked him a favor: although the school year had already started three weeks ago, could he please admit 11 students from La Peña to Leiva?
When I was a senior in high school I didn’t think I was going to go to college because I just didn’t think it’d be possible. I met questions about college with about as much forced apathy as most of the graduates from La Peña did saying things like ‘No, I am not going to college. I just don’t think I want to,’ when in reality I wanted nothing short of that. Then a little birdy named Hegarty sat me down daily and demanded I fill out Financial Aid forms, bypassed a few college application fees, and told me that despite what I lack, I should still get a chance to give this whole ‘learning how to read good’ thing a shot. Without help like her, I’d probably be working at Chubbies Liquors, playing scratch tickets, and hoping one day to finally be able to request a decent song on JAMN 94.5.
And look at me now!!! – poorer than I have ever been, living in one room brick shack, bathing with river water, and mowing my lawn with a machete. All that made possible with the help from people who told me I deserved a shot even when I probably didn’t. Ain’t I just livin’ the American Dream?
But seriously, I genuinely believe these young guns deserve their opportunity to get out of La Peña, continue learning, reading, maturing, learn a skill, meet a nice boy or girl that isn’t their first or second cousin, and hopefully move back to La Peña to take care of their parents and become the President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, and/or Vocales of the ADESCO.
When I brought the students into Leiva on Monday the 14th of February Don Roberto looked each one of them in the eye and said (allow me to paraphrase):
‘This is not going to be easy. You have already missed the first 4 classes, the first two lessons. Do you understand me? I don’t ask for perfection, I ask for ganas. Gregorio has spoken on your behalf, has offered his help. Now it’s up to you guys. If you don’t feel up for it, feel free to tell me, do not be shy. This is a serious commitment and needs to be approached as such. If you have any doubts you better put them away right now because in my desk I have a whole lot of papers for you to sign. If I didn’t have faith in you, I wouldn’t have asked you to come here today. So what do you say? (My students say absolutely nothing. Crickets try their hardest to conquer the silence at 9:30 AM) Alright! Let’s get started!’
Even though the Distance Learning Classes were at capacity, Don Roberto did me, did us, this huge favor and stuck his neck out to allow our 11 students into Leiva. He made an extra trip to the capital, San Salvador, to meet with the Director of Education there and bring all the necessary documents from our students out of the goodness of his heart. He did us an enormous favor and it is because of kindness from people like this that we were able to start this project.
So there you have it, damas y caballeros. The first 11 high school students ever out of La Peña.
That is not the end of this fable, though. I forgot to tell you that this was all just a really poorly written solicitude to you, my incredibly unfaithful audience, to help me raise some money.
This whole process would not have been possible without the help of two very generous donations from family friends. With these donations I have paid for uniforms, lesson plans, notebooks, classes, food, and transportation for the first few months. Unfortunately, these students won’t graduate within the next few months so I will need to continually fundraise to keep this project going. All in all it costs about $225 a month for these 11 students to graduate from high school but the future possibilities are astounding. One of my best friends, and one of the most intelligent and dedicated English students I have, Antonio, never graduated from high school here in La Peña. I asked him why and he said because you don’t really learn anything between 6th and 9th grade and his hard work was more valuable in the fields. What a shame, really, that they had such a glass ceiling. This sentiment isn’t felt by just Antonio, its felt by everyone in the community. Last year only three students graduated from 9th grade in La Peña, all girls, because people do not see any importance of graduating from the 9th grade when papi needs two extra hands to plant corn. What could they have really done past 9th grade before this? Nothing. It’s a damn shame that kids like Antonio have to cut themselves so short. I am hoping this project not only boosts the graduation rate because students can look forward to going to high school every year, but maybe even puts pressure on La Peña’s terrible school director to better teach these kids in order to better prepare them for high school. We will see.
So what I am asking is this: If you are feeling overly generous, slightly altruistic, deep pocketed, thirsty, kind, funny in the tummy, light headed, in love, cold, tired, buzzed, or just want to donate please, please, please contact me at gregcormier17@gmail.com. The amount doesn’t matter. You could send a check for a million dollars or use the US Postal Service to mail down a jar of pennies; anything and everything will be a huge help.
This is the first real project that I have done that I am genuinely, head over heels in love with. I want nothing more than to see La Peña’s future in the hands of the educated youth. I have already created a bank account for all the funds and within a short time will be appointing a Directive from this group of 11 students. Hopefully within the next year and a half I will have a new bank account created where one or two members of the community can be in charge of the monthly fees and can take care of the bill paying after I am gone.
So what do you say? Can you help me out? Can you spread the word? This donation will absolutely not be tax deductable, and it probably won’t turn bad karma around (if you’ve got any) but any little tiny donation will help immensely. Please keep us in mind and the begger in me is asking that you do not be shy, feel free to pass this information on to anyone you think may be interested. Yeah, just go ahead and do that.
On top of that, my application for a new $1300 project was approved by USAID to replace my very porous school roof with a much more durable, longer lasting, and sexier metal roof. Maybe now my students will stop coming to class with shampoo and towels.
Story time.
My buddy Gabe asked me ‘Who goes on vacation just to continue working?’
So for the past two and a half weeks I have been in Nicaragua helping and hindering a group of doctors and Tufts medical students run clinics in rural communities.
Here are some very true stories (with some not-so-true exaggerations) that made me realize I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
In the two and a half weeks that I was in Nicaragua I ate approximately 5 tortillas.
-----Here in El Salvador I eat at least 5 tortillas per meal. I never, ever, ever (ever) thought that I would miss these little flavorless disks of lovin’ but I sincerely did. The 5 that I ate in Nicaragua I had to specifically ask for. Nicaraguans apparently prefer to eat things with an upside to them, like rice, fruits, and vegetables. Those damn quacks.
People and dogs alike laughed themselves into convulsions when I fleetingly yelled ‘Shhhhh, chucho’ to get the mutts out of the kitchen. I didn’t understand why all the women left the kitchen blushing while the dogs stared at me blankly.
-----The Spanish word for dog is ‘perro.’ I have not called a dog a ‘perro’ in the 13 months that I have been pretending to know Spanish. That word is foreign to me and absolutely does not exist in my lexicon. Here in El Salvador, we lovingly refer to dogs as ‘chuchos.’ Well, I learned the hard way that in Nicaragua ‘perro’ is the word for dog and that ‘chucho’ is a vulgar word for vagina. I was never really allowed back in the kitchen after Day 1.
On our way out to Rosa Grande from Siuna I was chitting and chatting with Don Margarito and Albita about traveling and telling them about how I hadn’t brought much for this trip. Albita almost threw up into the box of eggs she was carrying and Don Margarito damn near drove off the rode in raucous, over-the-top laughter when I said ‘Yo no cargo mucho.’
-----Before figuring out what was so funny, we decided to take advantage of Margarito crashing into a ravine by washing off all the eggs that Albita has thrown up on in the crook that we ended up in. After all 250 eggs were sparkling clean, the two Nicaraguans explained to me that they heard me say ‘Yo no cago mucho.’ Apparently they did not understand my use of the verb ‘cargar’ which means to carry. They thought I used the verb ‘cagar’ which means to take a shit.
Most confusing of all, though, was how Harry threw his arms to the sky as if to thank dios for his most incredible bendición yet when I told him that I didn’t want to bother him: ‘No te quiero chingar, hombre.’
-----Long story short, Harry is a wise-ass from Bluefields and one of the most animated people you could ever meet. He did not waste the opportunity to make fun of me when I told him that I didn’t want to have sex with him. Chingar in El Salvador: To Bother. Chingar in Nicaragua: To Bang.
Those are just a few examples of how I made a complete ass of myself in my short time in Nicaragua.
These laughers aside, Nicaragua was a truly unbelievable experience. A close family friend, Brian Lisse, invited me to work with him and his 10 medical students running clinics in rural Northern Nicaragua. In those two weeks I met some of the most ridiculous, inspiring, and beautiful people I could have possibly hoped for. And the med students were alright, too.
Clinics were great. I spent from 730 AM til about 4 PM every day pretending to speak Spanish. The students’ job was to diagnose each patient that came into the clinic. My job was to act very confident being an intermediary between the patient and the student/soon to be doctor. I learned a lot of unbelievable things about PanDolor, Wei Wei taught me how to stitch people, Sharad taught me how to talk to mothers about their pandolorian babies, Sarah definitely taught me that headaches, kidney pain, and lazy eyes are all signs of Raging Cervicitus and that I should immediately ask all women if they are sexually active and to please remove their clothes, Cho taught me that kids gummy vitamins are an incredible way to avoid scurvy in the campo, and Rebecca taught me what a good ear drum looks like and then what a bad, shrapnel filled ear drum looks like and then proceeded to up the excitement by allowing me to clean out his compacted earwax into a sandwich baggy. The students were unbelievable.
One Friday we decided that we wanted to eat pig. Enough of this rice and beans bologna (or is it bolonie?, balony?). Lets eat some meat!
So Harry and I wrestled a pig away from some local man, brought him back to the house and decided, with a really intense look in our eyes, that it was time, as Harry would say, ‘to slice up this haaaag.’ We had a problem, though. Both Sharad and I wanted to kill the pig. Only one person can kill a pig at a time (I learned that from Don Luis, the Sandista) so Sharad and I settled the argument the civilized way: Rock, Papers, Scissors, best two out of three. After a lengthy battle, a series of 5 straight where no one threw anything but scissors, we found ourselves tied at one. 10 battles down, and we were only tied 1 to 1. I started to feel the pressure. I was up big, 1-0, and I let the lead slip away. I had to get my head back in the game. I did a couple jumping jacks, stretched out my hammies, and gave the pig a quick glance. He seemed to look at me as if to say ‘Buen provecho, Goyo. It’s time to eat’ and I knew that he was mine. Sharad and I gave each other a nod, it was on…
‘Rock!!!! Paper!!!! Scissors!!!!....’ time seems to stand still, everything moving in slow motion. My body starts to relax, my mind goes blank, I think about how funny it was that I told Harry I didn’t want to bang him and instinctively I throw old reliable…
‘SHOOOOOOOT!!!’
I stand upright and wave to the crowd (of two). Sharad leans back against the kitchen wall, defeated. I’m in shock. They tell me to grab the knife, that it’s time, but I can’t…my fingers seem to be permanently stuck in the shape of old reliable…
Needless to say the trip was amazing and I owe at least my first 13 children to Brian and Cindy for making it possible. I met some really great people, got a taste of home, killed a pig, cliff jumped, caught my first wave, drank pandolorian blood, learned how to stitch up serious cuts (I am doing my own stitches from here on in), learned some English Creole, danced my ass off, diagnosed at least 100 patients with kidney cancer, swung from vines, and cured one patient with a serious cup of smokey tea.
And although I spent about 42 hours in clinic in a 6 day span, those loonies sure didn’t make it feel like work at all. My words could hardly do any justice to how great of a trip that one was. Most important of all I learned that I will never trust my future children in the hands of a Tufts educated doctor.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)